"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." -Kurt Vonnegut

Friday, January 16, 2009

Coryell Island

I wrote this last spring, it is most definitely unfinished.

There are two ways for islands to be swallowed:by water and by land.My Island is being engulfed by the latter.But engulf—like swallowing—seems indicative of moisture.

We never had a sand dune before the water started sinking.(Is this how water sinks, into the solid?)

We made a joke that old Horween needed to park his yachtthat he sailed in from Chicago,and he took his sand and put it onto our property(He took our water.)

Old Horween is dead.The old Walkers too, have abandonedtheir Island cabin for one on the shore.There is a pictureof my father and young John Walkerstanding shirtless with long hairin front of the old Hotel as they were dismantling it. We still have the postcardsof people standing barefoot on the docks that now are half on shorewith fish hanging on strings.

The old post office is still there,spider webs line the wallsand giant ant hills covered the path around the outside.When I walk by, the ants crawl in my sandalsand bite my feet. At night, in bed,I stare at the spiders that cling to the walls.The only ones I can identify are the daddy-longlegswith their long spindly limbs and red ball of a center.When I think about them, I can feel themcrawling up my arms and down my legs.I worry they will go inside my mouth.

The tennis court is still there as well;water damaged and covered with slugsand sunbathing snakes.There is a lock on it now.There are stories of the younger generationhaving tennis court battles every summer.The five Coryell boys—Bruce, Jim, Scott, Jeff, and EricAll but forgotten, except to the historybooks in the old boat museum.

They still have the Old Salt’s race,every year in July.One year it rained, and they gave my Grandpa Rexthe prize, because he entered so many times and never won.But what will happen, when the boats start brushing the shore?Our Loonfeather is trapped at the marina, her blue coveredsnapped all the way up. Our other boat,the Dread Knot (because my father dreads driving it so),was smashed again a dock, the night our extension dock broke off.That would never happen with a real dock, one that was builtbefore the Island started sinking.The one I used to paddle under in an inflatable raft.And the seaweed creature, I was sure was going to eat meis hidden under the thin new replacement boards.